Zooming out to this whole conversation on Twitter because it really is bizarre. To summarize:
Tracy Chou: I don't like that I have to use Mastodon to read stuff from tech people.
Doge Guy: Tech people have nothing worth hearing anyway.
Elon Musk: I hope tech people stay on Mastodon.
So basically, if you want to hear from tech people, you must use Mastodon.
But according to Elon Musk, why would you do that? Tech people have nothing worth saying anyway. And he hopes they stay on Mastodon.
Whether Elon Musk likes it or not, tech people have important things to say that a whole lot of other people want to read.
For example, here's Google employee @johnmu talking about search engine optimization.
https://mastodon.social/@johnmu/109879325577937391
This is actually something that a lot of publications might want to report on.
Social networks are not always about how many people use them, but more specifically *who* uses them.
Twitter itself was never that popular compared to Facebook.
It always had an outsized influence on public culture due to who used it.
Well, now tech people and academics have migrated over to the Fediverse.
Which means that if you want to talk to tech people and academics, you have to figure out how to use it.
For many people, the Fediverse is becoming critical for work.
In fact, the Fediverse is now so critical to the tech industry that GitHub rolled out support for Mastodon profiles this month.
That's not a small thing.
Again, if you want to talk to tech people, a Fediverse presence is paramount.
https://mastodon.social/@nova@hachyderm.io/109790532829442644
Here's the thing about network effects.
If a culture has a strong enough pull, everything adjacent to that culture gets pulled within its orbit.
This is why Tracy Chou finds herself forced to use Mastodon -- despite wishing she could stay on Twitter.
For example, where tech people go, tech executives tend to follow.
Where tech executives go, other industry executives follow.
Where executives go, VCs and investors follow.
That's how network effects work.
(A whole lot of people don't like the notion of money people hopping onto the Fediverse. But that's what happens when you build something so appealing to tech people: everyone adjacent gets pulled into it.
Thankfully, the Fediverse gives us freedom of association. We can quarantine the money people if that's what we want. Which is what has effectively been done to the crypto crowd.)
Let's now talk about the migration of academics to the Fediverse.
That's going to have wide-reaching implications across social media.
If Twitter continues its trend for maximum outrage-driven "virality", and the Fediverse continues its trend for quality research -- where will people go to cite high quality research?
Again, what's the network effect of academia migrating to the Fediverse?
* Public policy and think tanks will follow
* R&D departments will follow
* Students will follow
Everything in academia's orbit will be pulled into the Fediverse.
As much as I hated Twitter's blue checks, I admit that they were damn effective for building reputation.
By Elon Musk making this a paid feature and phasing out "legacy Twitter Blue", he's killed the reputation of the blue check.
And that has an effect on the network effect because one thing academia is very concerned about is reputation.
Now that academia is using the Fediverse, it's entirely possible that academics will build tools for building reputation.
The Fediverse will succeed because it attacks Big Social in an existential sense.
Sure, Meta and Twitter can copy Snapchat and Clubhouse and Telegram.
They can't copy the Fediverse's decentralized structure because that's an attack on Big Social's existence.
The reason Big Social exists is to control your social graph!
It's interesting how Elon Musk reacts to this attack on Twitter's existence.
His response is, "Well, everyone migrating to the Fediverse has nothing worth saying, and I hope they stay there."
Pretty much, that's the only thing he can say because what's the alternative?
He can't integrate ActivityPub and federate Twitter with the Fediverse. That would destroy the reason he bought Twitter.
All his decisions over the past 3 months would be useless.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews I am tech people, and I don't miss getting gaslit by Musk on Twitter. Not.One.Bit. It's actually entertaining watching that dumpster-fire from afar.
@hu_logic @atomicpoet @fediversenews I'm not a tech guy and I'm surprised I'm enjoying learning about tech on Mastodon. I owe this to #SpaceKaren
The thing that needs to be got over to all kinds of business types, is to understand that this is a different place. that
To succeed here, it's necessary to respect the culture. This needs a different, (better) kind of marketing.
Raspberry Pi did a brilliant job of moving in early and using their own kit for an instance, and then blew it completely by having a completely deaf ear to the culture here.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews Well, journalists SHOULD be citing research papers, but if they're instead going to cite social media posts about those papers, I guess the Fediverse is better than Big Social.
Remember when universities hosted Usenet instances?
A U mastodon instance is a nice way to keep alumni close.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews it’s glorious watching him creating a boring right wing echo chamber. They’re gonna miss us.
What if Twitter introduced ActivityPub, basically the entire Fediverse defederated with it within no time, but Truth Social re-activated its federation, just to connect to the birbsite?
@jupiter_rowland Is Gab federated?
@peterbutler @jupiter_rowland With whom? I suppose they are, but I am sure they all are dedederated by what are mainstream ones by my yardstick. So far there is unison re defederation is concerned
@atomicpoet @fediversenews
Is the fediverse's mere existence really an attack? I can see how someone as self-absorbed as bird dude would interpret it as an attack because obviously it has to be all about himself.
I interpret the fediverse as a set of social media solutions bypassing Big Tech completely. Is being ignored/mocked from a different jurisdiction truly an attack? It's hardly aggression. But big tech's response to it has totally been aggressive.
Who's really attacking whom here?
@GertyBz @atomicpoet @fediversenews yes! Agreed.. I think that’s how he just sees life.. it’s all about him..
@kcsorenby @atomicpoet @fediversenews
I think we all do to some extent. I know my life is all about me. The difference is that I also know that your life is all about you.
@GertyBz @atomicpoet @fediversenews so true.. we all do. But the way I see it.. the highest point is the care and concerns for others..the awareness of others.. and you do that.. it will come back to you.. anyway …just my thinking ..
@kcsorenby @atomicpoet @fediversenews
… "it will [may] come back to you", except when the "others" cared and concerned over, are people like bird dude. I've learnt to stop relying on _all_ others to pass on what they've been given, sadly.
@GertyBz @atomicpoet @fediversenews so true.. Understand completely.. Thanks for your thoughts and for listening to mine.
@kcsorenby @atomicpoet @fediversenews
Right back atcha. :)
@atomicpoet @fediversenews
In any context, the usefulness of bird dude's past 3 months' decisions in any context has yet to be determined.
Absolutely this. He has backed himself into a corner of his own arrogance. He literally fired everyone who could have saved him from himself and now he's unchecked.
@tetraca @fediversenews But look at this chart for Friendica. It's not just Mastodon that's growing, it's other Fediverse services too.
@tetraca
I'm curious to how hard it currently is to set up your own instance.
I believe that when you can go to GoDaddy, select your domain name, select the "Mastodon" hosting package, and configure everything via super intuitive back end, then more people, and especially organisations will do this.
@tetraca
Cool 
That's the business idea, let's make it happen
@Brendanjones @tetraca
I wonder if someone is working on this.
>The reason Big Social exists is to control your social graph!
and with Fediverse you escape that control completely?
@otso @fediversenews Nobody is making that claim.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews no billionaire owns us!
@atomicpoet @fediversenews
Instead of "reputation", I would phrase academics' concerns as being with verifiable credentials, accreditation and peer credibility within that field. Or similar.
I find the term "reputation" to be overused and unhelpfully vague. Reputations can be built with any demographic but how reliable/credible are its members?
@atomicpoet @fediversenews I don't disagree but it seems remarkably hard to pull Academia this way (I am doing my best..)
@atomicpoet @fediversenews @mandelbrot57 sad truth is folk will yes but about anything following which isn’t money.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews @mandelbrot57 which is to say that having a _useful_ social platform won’t be cost neutral.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews @mandelbrot57 and I promise it’s juice well worth the squeeze.
Of course, once the server is up and running, students will be able to register accounts or even be given one right away. And they'll also be allowed to use it for private purposes, also to protect them from the open hostility in Big Social silos like the birbsite.
One step that hasn't been mentioned yet is that we'll end up with lots of graduates with Fediverse accounts and acquaintances in the Fediverse. Even if they can't stay on the university's server, they'll very likely stay in the Fediverse because, as crazy as this may have sounded a couple of years ago, that's where their friends are.
Perhaps of interest:
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/02/from-the-community-stanford-needs-an-official-mastodon-server/
And uc santa cruz now has a mastodon server (go slugs!) https://mstdn.social/@ucsc
@jupiter_rowland yeah, I think this is what will happen. However there are several limitations with account migration that limit the ease and desirability of migrating at the moment. Not least of all being that you lose your post history when you migrate. Until that’s resolved, I don’t know why anyone would create an account on a server they know they’re going to have to migrate off of.
#Mastodon offers you very basic microblogging, and when you move instances, you can only take those whom you follow with you.
#Friendica, to do a big step upward, allows you what rather amounts to macroblogging. It adds stuff like text formatting, RSS and e-mail integration, a public calendar and a personal file server on top. And it lets you move your account to another node with everything on it, including the files on your file server.
#Hubzilla not only lets you move your channel(s) from hub to hub with everything on it. Its #NomadicIdentity would theoretically allow you to have the same channel(s) simultaneously on MIT's hub, on UCSC's hub, on Stanford's hub, on UCI's hub, on Berkeley's hub, on TU Harburg's hub, on four public hubs and on your personal hub which you run on a Raspberry Pi at home, and they'd all be fully in sync. Plus, on top of Friendica, it adds a WebDAV server, a CalDAV server for private calendars, a CardDAV server for contact lists, blog articles, simple websites, a simple wiki engine etc.
@jupiter_rowland
Many factors why people choose Mastodon:
- it’s familiar (basically like Twitter)
- it’s simple (if people are looking for a Twitter replacement then they’re not looking for email, rss or calendar integration)
- it has apps (I just searched for Friendica and Hubzilla apps on the App Store, nothing came up)
- the UI is more polished (though not pretty)
- network effect (following other people there)
- social proof (it’s where the people are already)
Blue checks were a status symbol everyone craved. Now anyone with a few bucks can buy it.
It isn't beginning. It has already begun.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews I still have fond memories of only a few months ago when my timeline consisted of academics, artists and gender fluid gamers, and it was so sweet.
But I've met a lot of really interesting, and equally nice people since the Musk implosion.
:~/eu/pl/priv$
@atomicpoet @fediversenews
This works until the toxic crowd isn't too large and is dispersed. Because, if someone with a lot of money comes along and decides, for example, to join the fediverse with his entire corpo-social with tens of millions of accounts then in a while he can announce that the fediverse is him.
@atomicpoet wait what happened to the crypto crowd? Fediblocked?
I was wondering what was keeping Mastodon from turning into Nostr.
@jeromechoo @atomicpoet I think it depends on your #instance, and as someone involved in #crypto, I can speak for the others. Most crypto guys don't care about centralization unless it has a token. #Mastodon has no token. Thus, it isn't decentralized in their books.
@atomicpoet
Yep. I dunno who Tracy Chou is but I've watched the geek places progressively pull in others over and over again.
We move, they follow.
Eventually so many of them follow that it starts to suck and we have to build something less sucky.
Maybe one day we'll find a way to build something too weird and difficult for them to all follow, but I doubt it.
Weirdos explore the edges of the social space, and then when they find something that works everyone else flows in.
@pre @atomicpoet @fediversenews Look what they did to Burning Man.